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Comments 11501 to 11550:
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Daniel Bailey at 03:30 AM on 6 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Sunspot, I'm going to assume that's conjecture on your part, unless by some remote chance you can cite a credible source that supports that assertion?
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Sunspot at 02:34 AM on 6 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Reducing CO2 in the atmosphere would be a good thing of course. But reducing the particles in the atmosphere would lead to very rapid warming by reducing the reflectivity of the atmosphere, aka "Global Dimming". If we actually succeeded in eliminating the "Asian brown cloud", the increased solar energy reaching the surface of the planet would lead to a very rapid increase of the global average temperature of up to .5 degrees C, within a few days to maybe a week.
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stonefly at 02:33 AM on 6 April 2019Milankovitch Cycles
Yes, thank you, Bob.
Then I will assume that the reason precession does not treat the northern and southern hemisphere equally is because of distance.
The sun's rays strike the planet at the same degrees north latitude at perihelion as they strike at south latitude at aphelion, six months later. So it's not the angle of the sun's rays that is affected by precession, it's the distance.
Is that correct? -
stonefly at 00:02 AM on 6 April 2019Milankovitch Cycles
Yes, thank you, Bob.
Then I will assume that the reason precession does not treat the northern and southern hemisphere equally is because of distance.
The sun's rays strike the planet at the same degrees north latitude at perihelion as they strike at south latitude at aphelion, six months later. So it's not the angle of the sun's rays that is affected by precession, it's the distance.
Is that correct?
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MA Rodger at 19:43 PM on 5 April 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15 @695,
Correcting someone who refuses to be corrected is a bit of an up-hill struggle. I'm sure we have been over his (2) before (although @652 it was 4%). Why would the denialist consider that just 5% of atmospheric CO2 is down to anthropogenic causes? That would be just 20ppm. Where did the other 110ppm come from? That's 860Gt of CO2 so the source should be quite evident.
And his (7), the poor fool appears to be confusing the average length-of-stay of an individual CO2 molecule in the atmosphere with the length-of-stay of an increased CO2 concentration. On the latter, the 'half-life' is perhaps 100 years but there is a long tail in that the last fifth will remain in the atmosphere for many thousands of years. After just three years, an injection of CO2 into the atmosphere would have reduced by less than 5%. (When we consider this, we talk of the Atmospheric Fraction, the amount CO2 rises each year relative to the anthropogenic emissions. The Af is roughly 45% but implying 55% has been sequestrated into oceans/biosphere. But the 55% is actually the sum of all those tiny percentage reductions for all the years since human emissions began as a percentage of just one year's emissions.)
And back upthread @683, you quote presumably the same denialist source insisting that "the fact that we are in a 50-75 year solar minimum cooling phase". I did a quick 11-year averaging of TSI data which stretches back to 1976. The weak Sunspot Cycle has resulted in TSI dropping by 0.25Wm^-2 which needs converting from a discal projection to a global value and adjusted for albedo, yielding 0.04Wm^-2. That is about the same as one year of AGW so if there is a full Maunder Minimum on the way, its impact is yet to show up in the TSI data.
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TVC15 at 13:51 PM on 5 April 2019Climate's changed before
@696 scaddenp @697 Eclectic
You guys are great! I see most of his silly Gish Gallops can be addressed from the Myth Section here on Skeptical Science.
Thank you both so much for all the wonderful information you provide me with in order to debunk these deniers. I have learned so much from you all and I am honored to be able to interact with people who know what they're talking about!
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Eclectic at 13:33 PM on 5 April 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15 , welcome to the world of crazy Gish Gallops. Don't bother to reply on every point ~ just select a few, e.g. :-
1. On your skin, a very thin smear of suncream chemicals causes a major reduction in sunburn. A big change, from a very small dose.
13. Thermometer readings vary slightly from year to year, but the Earth is still warming because excess heat is still coming in (through the excess Greenhouse effect) and the oceans are still building up heat since they absorb around 93% of the excess incoming heat ~ that's why the world's ice is continuing to melt. No cooling and no pause in melting!
14. If it does ever happen to come, a prolonged solar minimum (just like the Maunder Minimum) will cause a cooling of about 0.3 degreesC [ about 0.5 degreesF ]. Since the world's warming is continuing at approx 0.15 degreesC per decade, that means it will take only 20 years of Greehouse warming to cancel the effect of the solar minimum (if it comes at all). And then the warming will just continue to get worse. Nope, there's no hope to be gotten from a grand solar minimum.
15. In the distant past, when CO2 was much higher, the sun's radiation level was significantly LOWER. (Over the long term, our sun gets 1% hotter per every 150 million years approx.). If you want to see oceans boil, come back in a few bilion years' time!
22. All else being the same, more CO2 is helpful to most plants ~ but in the real world, more CO2 leads to more droughts, more floods, and hotter & more prolonged heat waves : so plants suffer damage and produce less crop-yield. Not good for humans.
TVC15 , tell 'im to go away and educate himself and not spout the rubbish he's been giving us.
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scaddenp at 13:14 PM on 5 April 2019Climate's changed before
Since it looks to me like all the above are readily answerable and mostly from our myths section, I would assume that your denier has not the slightest interest in the correct answer and very much doubt they would take the time to read it anyway. Aside from the strawmen like "what happened to time without snow" -sure sign someone has never opened IPCC report.
I'd repeat, you cant reason someone out of something they werent reasoned into. If this is an online public argument, then post links to the answers here (we can help if you cant find them), so observers can see he is an idiot, but be assured that reply wont change the mind of someone who's position is based on identity. If it is someone you know, then I would recommend Katherine Hayhoe TED talk for more effective way to talk, but I suspect you are way past point where person is capable of hearing anything you say.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:20 PM on 5 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
nigelj,
I should have been clearer. My concern about pointing out the benefits of reduced particulate is that morally corrupted leaders could try to claim that reduction of particulate is a moral justification to continue burning 'clean coal'.
Reducing excess CO2 is the main ethical objective. As you said, reduced particulate is a side-benefit.
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TVC15 at 12:16 PM on 5 April 2019Climate's changed before
This is the craziest Gish Gallop I've ever seen. Yes it's one of the deniers I deal with.
Please refute the facts, instead of simply launching emotional diatribes.
1. Is CO2 not .04% of atmospheric gases?
2. Is man made CO2 not 5% of atmospheric CO2?
3. Does water vapor not absorb IR energy over bandwidths 30X that of CO2?
4. Is water vapor not .4-1% of atmospheric gases?
5. Can one accurately compare over time temperature measurements estimated or measured by four different methods?
6. Why don't the "temperature plots vs time" show the error bars for the methods used for temp measurement? (comparing "proxy temps" to digital, satellite proxies, and mercury thermometer measurements should immediately disqualify any scientific comparison).
7. Why did temps not fall in the Great Depression when CO2 production fell 60%? (atmospheric CO2 has a half life of 3 years, not the very long periods suggested)
8. Why did temps fall in ww2? Was the Battle of the Bulge and Stalingrad fought in tropical climates?
9. How can the 1930s be the hottest decade on record when the AGW crowd says temps have continually increased since then?
10. Why has Miami and New York not flooded?
11. Why has there not been worldwide droughts?
12. What happened to the "times without snow"? Tell that to everyone in the US this year.
13. Why are temps falling?
14. Are we not at the beginning of a prolonged solar minimum, similar to the Mauder minimum?
15. Why did the earth not end and temps reach the boiling point of water when CO2 levels were 10X what they are now?
16. What is the contribution of solar activity and sun spots to temps?
17. What is the contribution of the orbit of the earth around the sun?
18. What is the contribution of volcanic activity?
19 If the "warming" models from 20 years ago are wrong, why are they correct now?
20 How did they measure multiple temp points at remote areas of the ocean and polar regions 200 years ago?
21. Have all the locations of temps measured over time been consistent geographic points? (Of course not- there has not been one consistent data point until the last twenty years).
22. Why were temps warmer during the Roman Empire when CO2 levels were half what they are today?
CO2 provides all the carbon that is the building blocks for ALL ORGANIC LIFE on this planet. Every carbon atom in your body that makes up all of the carbon compounds in your body were once CO2. It is not surprising that the death cult of AGW would seek to reduce or eliminate a molecule equally important as water or oxygen for life on earth.
The "optimal" CO2 for plant growth is 900-1100 ppm. We need a lot MORE CO2, not less. Due to higher CO2 levels, plant life has increased over the last 30 years, providing a greening of the planet and higher crop production. Do you want to reduce plant life and cause famines?
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Bob Loblaw at 11:06 AM on 5 April 2019Milankovitch Cycles
stonefly:
Precession means that the orbit maintains the same eccentricity (eilliptical vs. circular), and the earth maintains the same tilt, but the timing during the year of closest/furthest parts of the orbits changes. RIght now, earth comes closest to the sun in January (NH winter, SH summer), and is furtherest away in July. (NH summer, SH winter).
If the opposite were true, - the earth and sun were closest in July, and furthest away in January - we would expect NH summers to be a bit warmer, NH winters to be a bit cooler, SH summers to be a bit cooler, and SH winters to be a bit warmer. So the NH would see greater seasonality, and the SH would see less.
The diagramns above show the same orbit/earth-sun reletaionship and change the labels for Dec/Mar/Jun/Sep. This may be a little hard to follow. Look at the single diagram in the upper left of figure 4, I reproduce it here:
Look a tthe left half only, and think "what would happen if the sun were offset to the right of centre, instead of the left of centre?"
The diagrams in the article keep a different fixed reference, so in the right half the sun and orbit are in the same position but the earth is titled differently. The other diagrams in the change where in the diagram the months are labelled. This is correct in terms of the fixed background positions of the stars, but makes it harder to see that from another viewpoint it is just a matter of which end of the ellipse the sun is located at.
Does that help?
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stonefly at 08:41 AM on 5 April 2019Milankovitch Cycles
"It is important to note that under the precessional cycle, the change in solar radiation striking the Earth is opposite in each hemisphere, unlike the case of obliquity where a higher tilt will mean more intense radiation at both poles as the planet revolves around the sun (although, obviously at the local summer summer for both poles, and thus at different points in the orbit)."
I've been trying to understand precession. I cannot envision the precession cycle. I cannot understand why the above quoted passage holds true.
When I envision precession, I imaging the precession adding to obliquity, therefore insolating both hemishpheres equally.
Can somebody help me understand precession?Moderator Response:[PS] Edited for clarity at posters request
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nigelj at 06:58 AM on 5 April 2019Why results from the next generation of climate models matter
Regarding the article. The evidence does indeed point at a climate sensitivity of 3 degrees and its good the new models are helping refine this. The problem is this spread of climate sensitivity numbers is still quite large and 3 degrees is still not hugely certain. Politicians will look at this spread of numbers and be bewlidered and uncertain: and they hate that. It's really important that climate senstivity is pinned down so you can say you are 95% sure it's a certain number.
Regarding Direct air capture. I agree with OPOF. I think this probably has a place and enough potential to draw down some limited atmospheric CO2, but its going to have big problems doing more than this. These machines are still expensive and use a lot of specialist materials that are not in infinite supply.You will also have to find places to store the carbon, which will also require a lot of transport, and you will need unprecedented global cooperation.
While something is obviously possible, sucking all the carbon from the air obviously looks like it would require tens of thousands of machines, perhaps millions, and would strain the planets resources and economy beyond the limit. I think the use of massive levels of direct air capture to suck all the excess CO2 out of the air is lord of the rings fantasy stuff. So using this technology as an excuse to go on burning fossil fuels looks delusional. There is a difference between well reasoned evidence based technological optimism and pure wishful thinking.
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SirCharles at 06:01 AM on 5 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole
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nigelj at 06:00 AM on 5 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
OPOF @13, no you might be misunderstanding me. I'm not promoting clean coal, which is an idea that doesn't really work very well. I'm just saying we should all do more to emphasise the side benefits of transitioning to renewable energy. The media could do far more in this respect.
For example stopping using fossil fuels has obvious health benefits through less particulate emissions and nitrous oxides. Renewable energy has a range of advantages as well as the climate advantage. We need to emphasise these things because people respond well when they see they will be better off. Psychology 101.
By all means promote the moral duty aspect as well, because that is central to the issue. I do the same on various websites, (you do it here so no need for me to repeat what you say). However it won't be sufficient alone, and it's hard, slow work shifting peoples moral positions. It also has to be promoted in a way that connects with people positively because people can get a bit defensive about moral judgements.
I agree CO2 scrubbing by direct air capture must not be used as an excuse to go on burning fossil fuels. It may have its place to reduce some atmospheric CO2 but not all. It's important for people to realise it's costly, and is untested at scale. To directly capture all or most of the CO2 from the air will require tens of thousands of scrubbers (someone calculated this I cant remember the exact figure) and the planet probably doesn't have have the reserves of specialist metals required for this. While its ok to be optimistic about technology to a point, faith in future generations finding a way to scrub all the CO2 from the air rather than this generation reducing emissions is blind optimism and very irresponsible.
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SirCharles at 05:46 AM on 5 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Explained here, Wazoo:
=> Global warming will happen faster than we think
=> First successful model simulation of the past 3 million years of climate change
=> That’s how fast the carbon clock is ticking
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:50 AM on 5 April 2019Why results from the next generation of climate models matter
Improved awareness and understanding like this is essential and always helpful.
And the parallel development of effective mitigation actions like CO2 removal (See BBC article here) is important and can also be helpful.
But their helpfulness can be challenged by morally corrupted leaders. Stephen Gardiner presented improved understanding of how and why such moral corruption occurs in his 2011 book "A Perfect Moral Storm: The ethical tragedy of climate change".
Such morally correpted leaders can be expected to continue to try to excuse doing less to reduce the use of fossil fuels. They may:
- claim that they like the new science, but, because of the diversity of model results, claim that more certainty needs to be established before they will penalize the current generation just because of 'hopes' that doing so will limit the 'potential harm done to future generatons'.
- claim that because of the technological potential to remove CO2 they can do less to reduce the use of fossil fuels, rather than adding the CO2 removal as an action to help do less harm to future generations.
- abuse the claim of the potential for future generations to develop more and 'better' technology for CO2 removal as justification for choosing to be more harmful now.
- continue to unjustiably claim that, based on past evidence and economic models (a history of development based on unsustainable and harmful pursuits and models that are far less reliable than even the older climate models), the economy only ever increases in value and the richer future generations will easily be able to enjoy their future while also brilliantly solving every problem (correcting every harm) created by the previous generations who chose not to correct how they lived.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:49 AM on 5 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
nigelj@12,
One of Gardiner's expressed concerns is that moral corruption can be subtle. An example would be diverting attention from the awareness and understanding of the main moral matter, like talking about particulate reduction benefits.
The governing moral issue is the need to rapidly curtail the use of fossil fuels. It is OK to make that point and add mention of the side-benefits like:
- reduced particulate
- reduced absolutely certain to occur environmental damage (the damage allowed to be done by the extraction, processing and use)
- reduced risk of harm due to 'accidents' (most of which are no accidents, and their likelihood was increased by the permission of cost-saving or time-saving approaches)
- reduced increased costs as the unsustainable harmful activity gets harder to do ethically (more sustainable economic activity, less future challenges for the less fortunate).
But it is morally corrupt to focus on the side-benefits without ensuring the main point about the need to rapidly curtail fossil fuel use is made Front and Center.
A diversion to the side-benefits can support claims about the acceptability of things like 'Clean Coal' as excuses to not more rapidly reduce the burning of coal.
In Alberta, where one of the least ethical fossil fuels is produced for sale (very high CO2 impact per unit of end usable energy), the current sales pitch is that the activity is being done very ethically because it is done to very high 'environmental standards'.
Even the potential to cost-effectively scrub CO2 from the air (As presented in BBC article here) could be abused for morally corrupt purposes to delay the curtailing of fossil fuel use. In addition to aggressive reduction of fossil fuel burning, the scrubbing of CO2 from the air could help limit the harm done to future generations.
A focus on the benefits of the 'magic bullet' of scrubbing CO2 from the air could be abused to excuse a diminished effort to reduce the use of fossil fuel. That would be a morally corrupt diversion of attention and action. Only as an addition to the required action is the 'magic bullet' helpful. It needs to be sold as the way the wealthiest of the current generations can be even more helpful to future generations.
In addition to leading by example towards the lowest impact ways of living, the wealthiest would pay to have the CO2 scrubbing done with no personal financial return benefit, done at their expense not-for-profit. All they get would be the recognition of moral character benefits. Anyone not interested in having status measured that way can be poorer and less influential, become the less fortunate and less powerful would be 'less expected' to be 'moral leaders by example'.
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John Hartz at 23:54 PM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15:
Generally speaking, when a climate science denier is shoveling pseudo-science poppycock, always aggressively demand that they document the source(s). WUWT itself is not an acceptable source.
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TVC15 at 10:15 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
@689 scaddenp
Much appreciated!
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TVC15 at 07:39 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
@691 Daniel
Thanks!
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nigelj at 06:33 AM on 4 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
There are two types of change. Change with the promise of something better like the next model of smartphone and people mostly embrace this form of change. Then theres change forced by uncomfortable circumstances that requires paying a few costs and making a few lifestyle changes, like the need to stop using fossil fuels, and this is when people become much more conservative about change.
I've noticed that politicians who want to mitigate climate CO2 emissions and take moral positions on the climate issue are viciously insulted, labelled do gooders, or virtue signalling by the internent trolls.
Moralising about the climate only does so much. We are trying to draw a connection between a distant harm to future generations and present activity, and theres a lot of things that get in the way of making this connection. People claim future technologies will solve the problem, etc, and dont like being told they are doing the wrong thing.
Yet moral judgements form the basis of many of our laws so the morality of climate change seems very important. I just think its going to be a slow process educating people.
We could also additionally try to promote climate change mitigation by accentuating the positives, like less particulate emissions from burning coal. Shift the discussion more towards the first form of change of expecting something better because people embrace this.
Of course these things are not mutually exclusive. Raising awareness usually proceeds on several fronts simultaneously.
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Daniel Bailey at 06:23 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
Berner authored those first graphics at the RC link. Here's the same image, with his comments about the overall correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperatures over geologic time:
Of course, the Royer graphic also corrects for the Faint Young Sun and ocean pH changes over the same geologic timeframe, with the result of strengthening the correlation between those CO2 levels and global temperatures over geologic time:
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scaddenp at 06:18 AM on 4 April 20193 clean energy myths that can lead to a productive climate conversation
Not to mention the advances in grid-scale storage that are coming on line. FF plants arent the only backup available.
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TVC15 at 06:16 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
@ 688 John,
I found that this denier took it from wattsupwiththat blog site. (a blog site known for climate denialist propaganda)
I also found this in searching more about that graph.
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scaddenp at 06:13 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15 - I would say likely it is from here. The graphic itself has the source references for its data. In denier space, this usually goes with arguments that CO2 isnt related temperature - ignoring all the other drivers of climate.
The NPR article was on the Marcott 2013 paper, extensively discussed here. Put Marcott into the search box on top right. A criticism is that the methodology may not capture high frequency temperature change. The usual denier take is to point major spikes in the NH temperature record (eg Younger Dryas) associated with exit from glacials. There is some evidence of similar, anti-phased events, in SH record. These proxies to indeed indicate very rapid temperature change but I am not aware of evidence for a global temperature change of that speed as opposed to regional change. Mechanism is disputed, but is associated with end of glacial periods so relevance to present climate is doubtful to say least.
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John Hartz at 06:05 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
@TVC15:
You should pose your question about the source of a graph to the denier who posted it.
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TVC15 at 05:51 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
Can you guys tell me where this graph originated from? A denier is trying to use it to claim that there's no correlation between earth's CO2 levels and climate change in either direction (warmer or colder). And that's true over earth's 4+ billion year history.
Geological Timescale: CO2 Concentration v. Temperature Fluctuations
Thanks!
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TVC15 at 05:34 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
I have a question about the EPIC ice core data showing that the climate for the seven prior interglacials. The second denier I'm dealing with is stating:
"The reason it was 14.4°F warmer in Greenland than it is now is because during the last Inter-Glacial Period, the average global temperature was 73.7°F and not the current 58.4°F."
When I disclosed that the the EPICA ice core data (which covers back to eight previous interglacials) doesn't manage the 4.3°C to 8.3°C relative to today for seven prior interglacials.
He comes back with this: "Um, those are the temperature changes in the Antarctic, not the average global temperature."
My understanding of the EPICA Ice Core datas main objective is to obtain full documentation of the climatic and atmospheric record archived in Antarctic ice by drilling and analyzing two ice cores and comparing these with their Greenland counterparts (GRIP and GISP). Evaluation of these records will provide information about the natural climate variability and mechanisms of rapid climatic changes during the last glacial epoch.
What game is this denier tyring to play with me?
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TVC15 at 04:23 AM on 4 April 2019Climate's changed before
@684 scaddenp
Thanks scaddenp. He's the same denier who says CO2 is a basic building block of life. *rolled eyes*
The other denier I'm dealing with uses odd angles to come at me with.
"I guess you see only what you want to see.
Past Century's Global Temperature Change Is Fastest On Record
Past Century's Global Temperature Change Is Fastest On Record
It's not the fastest on record.
24 times in the last 100,000 years, the climate has fluctuated by as much as 20°F in a matter of years or decades.
78 times in the last 100,000 years, the climate has fluctuated by smaller amounts 4°F-6°F in a matter of years or decades.
Explain how 1.4°F over 140 years — 14 decades — is faster than that.
If I had to list every alarmist claim by NASA, or NPR, or National Geographic or the IPCC, I'd be here the rest of my life."
It's a new form of cherry picking combined with a Gish Gallop.
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Wazoo at 04:23 AM on 4 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
You forgot to explain how the asteroid was create by mankind's activity.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:22 AM on 4 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Perhaps in the near future, elected officials and political candidates will be 'embarassed' out of staying in office or running for election because of their previous harmful behaviour related to improving awareness and understanding of climate science and their resistance to the required corrections that are clearly ethically essential to improving the future for humanity.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:27 AM on 4 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
A wrap-up comment related to my comments @7 and 8:
Climate science has unintentionally exposed a significant required correction of what humans have developed. The Present is significantly morally corrupted. That is the fundamental reason for the difficulty climate scientists face in their efforts to improve awareness and understanding.
The awareness and understanding presented by Stephen Gardiner is not fundamentally new. It is a rigorous presentation of fundamental understanding that has been presented in the past. A recent clear presentation of the understanding was in the 1987 UN Report "Our Common Future" (24 years before Gardiner published his detailed presentation of the Moral Corruption Storm). And the fundamental idea was also presented by many people before that time. One of those presentations was by John Stuart Mills back in the 1800s.
In "On Liberty" Mills stated "If society lets a considerable number of its members grow up mere children, incapable of being acted on by rational consideration of distant motives, society has itself to blame for the consequences."
Gardiner's Global Storm is regarding a location-based Distant Motive (concern for Other locations on the planet). And his Intergenerational Storm is a time-based Distant Motive (concern for the future). And a third Distant Motive would be related to consideration of Other Life including Other people (an item mentioned by Gardiner as an issue covered/impacted by the Perfect Moral Storm).
That understanding was summarized as follows in opening section of "Our Common Future":
25. Many present efforts to guard and maintain human progress, to meet human needs, and to realize human ambitions are simply unsustainable - in both the rich and poor nations. They draw too heavily, too quickly, on already overdrawn environmental resource accounts to be affordable far into the future without bankrupting those accounts. They may show profit on the balance sheets of our generation, but our children will inherit the losses. We borrow environmental capital from future generations with no intention or prospect of repaying. They may damn us for our spendthrift ways, but they can never collect on our debt to them. We act as we do because we can get away with it: future generations do not vote; they have no political or financial power; they cannot challenge our decisions.
26. But the results of the present profligacy are rapidly closing the options for future generations. Most of today's decision makers will be dead before the planet feels; the heavier effects of acid precipitation, global warming, ozone depletion, or widespread desertification and species loss. Most of the young voters of today will still be alive. In the Commission's hearings it was the young, those who have the most to lose, who were the harshest critics of the planet's present management.The winners in politics and business have no defence for failing to be aware of this understanding and how it relates to their actions, especially today (and little defence for being unaware since 1987).
Gardiner, and so many others, point out that what is lacking is institutions that will hold the morally corrupted accountable and penalize them for failing to help improve awareness and understanding in pursuit of sustainable developments for the benefit of the future of humanity.
And the lack of such institutions can be understood to be the developed result of moral corruption being allowed to Win. Because the Winners establish what the Institutions will be and what they will do.
The fundamental rule of Ethics is "Do No Harm". The aspiration or objective of being Ethical is to "Help Others". That leads to an understanding that:
- being Ethical is restricted to 'only those actions that Do No Harm to Others, including not harming other life because Others may depend on that Other life as an essential part of the intricate web of life'. Only actions helpful to Others are Ethical.
- One person or group cannot ethically benefit if their actions will harm any Others. And future generations are Others.
The current generation faces an ethical dilemma. The actions of past generations have developed popular and profitable activities that are understandably harmful and ultimately unsustainable. How is that incorrect development to be corrected? (because it undeniably must be corrected). The Perfect Moral Storm'spowerful motivation toward Moral Corruption must be able to be Over-powered by Good Helpful people or there is no future for humanity, and that is clearly not an acceptable future option.
Clearly, to the greatest degree possible, the continued harm to others must be reversed. The damaging intergenerational cycle of moral corruption must be broken. Those who have become the most fortunate by benefiting from harmful unsustainable activity must be required to lead the correction, including giving up some of their developed perceptions of status relative to Others.
A likely required correction is that Status would be contingent on how helpful a person is. Anyone not wanting to lead that way should have their wealth and influence legally corrected to match the degree of responsibility the person is choosing to want (there being no expectation of helpfulness from the poorest).
Richer more influential people must morally be required to:
- develop the ability to have lower impact lives than poorer people
- put more effort into helpfully improving awareness and understanding.
- sustainably help the less fortunate live decent lives
They cannot be allowed to remain Richer and more Powerful if they choose not to be more ethical than Others.
And that required correction has been unintentionally exposed by climate science. It is the fundamental reason for the difficulty climate scientists face in their efforts to improve awareness and understanding.
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cpske at 00:36 AM on 4 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Heh, best April First article on the web!
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SirCharles at 22:26 PM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
ExxonMobil shareholders will not get a vote on whether the company should set targets for cutting its greenhouse gas emissions, following a ruling by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
New York State’s pension fund and other investors had called for the oil company to start setting targets for reducing emissions in line with the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
But the SEC ruled on Tuesday that Exxon could keep the proposal off the ballot at its annual shareholder meeting next month.
=> Exxon shareholders denied vote on emissions targets | Financial Times
Exxon have been notorious liars and will probably lose their lobby registration at the EU-Parliament therefore.
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michael sweet at 22:05 PM on 3 April 20193 clean energy myths that can lead to a productive climate conversation
Thinking Man,
I note that you show no math or citations to support your wild claims.
I have seen several attempts by wind opponents to calculate very high costs of wind using absurd assumptions like you describe. About 5 years ago one was published in a journal. No-one refers to that article now because everyone informed knows that it was BS from the start.
In spite of these calculations, in Texas and New England wind energy underbids all fossil fuels including gas. Real world experience indicates that wind is cheaper than all fossil fuels.
ps: I thought that the 6 day in advance estimates of wind energy were pretty good. Since utilities use these for routine planning if a fossil plant that is on standby is forecast to be needed 6 days in advance they have sufficient time to get the fossil plant online. The one day (or one hur) forecasts are the ones that control what is done in the end. Everyone knows that forecasts are not as accurate beyond 4 days. Claiming a 6 day forecast is important is a strawman argument.
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JohnSeers at 19:45 PM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
@SirCharles 12
"... numerous attempts to derive E=mc² from first principles have failed"
That is hilarious. I think Einstein is famous for most of his work being thought experiments and deriving his equations from "first principles". Including E=mc² . -
AnnieLaurieBurke at 16:20 PM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
August 25, 2046? Oh, cr^p! That's just 2 months after my 100th birthday! ;-(
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sarokarekpahal at 15:30 PM on 3 April 2019Major study uncovers ‘sea change’ in world’s understanding of Atlantic conveyor belt
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow ouNon Government Organizations are actually the backbone of society. These NGO help the Society before any government help. Thousands of helping hands works together in any disasters before the happening of such crisis. Thanks for sharing such a valuable post according to new ways of social NGO. SAROKAR NGO is different than othersr comments policy. Thank You!
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:04 PM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
I will add an important point to my comment @7.
Perceptions of prosperity or reduction of poverty that are the result of unsustainable and harmful pursuits cannot be expected to continue as benefits into the future.
That is an inescapable reality. Unsustainable harmful pursuits have a competitive advantage when the measures of 'value' are popularity or profitability. Once valid ethics is introduced (not claims about morality that are just poor excuses for harmful unsustainable pursuits) everything changes.
The current developed world has become highly morally corrupted. Misleading marketing is a major reason. Politics being a free-for-all regarding misleading marketing has only made things Progressively (and Conservatively) Worse.
Progressive development of sustainable improvements, and related corrections of what has developed based on constantly improving understanding, is compromised by the easy popularity of resistance to correction, the resistance to learning, the resistance to changing an incorrectly made-up mind.
The resistance to correction has made many problems worse. The result is the development of requirements for more traumatic corrections. The required corrections today are larger and more urgent that they were 30 years ago.
The key to improving the future is to make the corrections earlier, and ensure that the reduced trauma of the correction (reduced because it was started earlier) is experienced by the people who benefited most from the creation of the problem before the corrections started to be implemented.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:48 PM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Talk of the limitations of electric cars is interesting. But the reality is that electric rapid transit was effectively implemented about 100 years ago.
And debating technical details regarding climate change and responsible actions is interesting, but can be a damaging distraction.
And claiming that the choice is 'reduce the harm done to future generations' or 'help the poor today by doing more harm to the future generations' is clearly a false choice. Poverty and reduction of future climate impacts can been achieved simultaneously, at the expense of people who gained status in ways that are not sustainable, ways that create poverty and climate impacts.
The reason there is still poverty in a nation as collectively wealthy as the USA has a similar cause as the reason such a wealthy nation has such powerful resistance to behaving better regarding climate change. And it is similar to the reason there is poverty in any nation (almost every nation has wealthy people and deep poverty).
And that brings me to the point of referring to a book I highly recommend to people who want to better understand what is going on, regarding more than climate change, but with climate change as a powerful case study.
"A Perfect Moral Storm: the Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change.", by Stephen Gardiner published in 2011, is a comprehensive and hard to argue against presentation of the ethical issue (the moral corruption of leadership) that climate science has exposed in a big way.
The 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #3 included the following presentation by Gardiner:
Why climate change is an ethical problem by Stephen Gardiner, In Theory, Washington Post, Jan 9, 2016
It is an updated summary of the thinking he presented in his book. But some here may remember that back in 2012 his book played a key part in the following SkS item posted by Andy Skuce in 2012: "Changing Climates, Changing Minds: The Great Stink of London"
In that item a series of points regarding climate change impacts are presented and followed by the following:
"In his recent book A Perfect Moral Storm, The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change, Stephen Gardiner identified three “storms” that come together in a wicked synergy to make the climate crisis an especially intractable problem.
- The Global Storm. The unequal dispersion of cause and effect across the planet. See b), c) and d) above.
- The Intergenerational Storm. The effects of our emissions are deferred and will persist essentially for ever on historical timescales. See e) and f) above.
- The Theoretical Storm. We currently lack the institutions, conventions and tools—political, moral and economic—needed to tackle the exceptional problems posed by climate change and we are going to have to invent them as we go along. See g) above.
"After this analysis it shouldn’t be difficult to appreciate why we’re not doing any better than the Londoners were in 1855. Actually, to quote climate scientist Ray Pierrehumbert (pdf):
So far, we’re not doing any better than cyanobacteria."
The Green New Deal is proof that some people are trying to do better than cyanobacteria. But they still face massive resistance from morally corrupted wealthy people and the type of leadership the morally corrupted want.
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SirCharles at 12:15 PM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
BTW. Ever seen that, folks?
Conservapedia: "E=mc² is liberal claptrap"
=> https://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=E=mc%C2%B2
That's for real.
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scaddenp at 11:37 AM on 3 April 2019Climate's changed before
TVC - you are wasting your time with this idiot. Your graphic is based on some fundimental physical assumptions, especially the conservation of energy. From this we deduce that changing the radiative balance will change climate. Measuring individual contributions to the radiative balance does indeed yield that diagram. It is possible to construe a possible downward trend in solar, but he thinks a change of 0.1W/m2 is significant then why isnt change of 3.7W/m2 (GHG) even more significant. The claim "that we "know" that the only thing that really matters is CO2?" is strawman. Reading any of the references associated with the diagram shows that all the causes contribute and are accounted for - but that CO2 is the most important for current climate change. He is not interested in examining the evidence. He needs to supply evidence that refutes the methodology or finding of those papers. I doubt you get him to read any of them.
His comments present not one shred of evidence in reply. It is scoffs from personal incredulity based on wilful ignorance. You will not make any impact on someone who chooses not to understand.
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SirCharles at 10:30 AM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
@10. nigelj
Just build more wind turbines... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w_eSVGSl8Q
Trump has always been an extreme hypocrite. So he might actually fall for this 'idea'
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TVC15 at 08:59 AM on 3 April 2019Climate's changed before
My the denialist is trying to debunk this link I posted.
"You actually believe that one can parse individual contributions to "climate" change so precisely and then assign (with similar precision) relative contributions from man and "natural" causes?"
"That is priceless. So I guess the fact that we are in a 50-75 year solar minimum cooling phase is lost to you then? Should we not be concerned about that large burning gas ball in the sky, now that we "know" that the only thing that really matters is CO2?"
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nigelj at 07:46 AM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
It could be hollow. Donald Trump could always hire Bruce Willis, experiended asteroid hunter, to blow the asteroid out of the sky, provided of course poor countries pay as much to help as rich countries, or the "deal is off".
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nigelj at 06:49 AM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Sometimes governments have "picked winners" and so backed things that have failed, but so has the private sector, with numerous examples in the technology area. Picking winners is an inescapable part of life.
The private sector has backed fossil fuels just as much as governments.
Governments can minimise picking winners by treating all forms of renewable electricity generation the same.
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nigelj at 06:22 AM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
Dana's article is really good, but it unfortunately it looks to me like a carbon tax and dividend isn't gaining much traction in America. Perhaps there is just too much ideological paranoia about taxes for it to ever work.
The government infrastructure spend in the GND might be the only thing thats viable. The senate have voted down the GND but a government spend at realistic levels might be viable. Subsidies around the world for wind power etc have yielded results. The GOP is quite happy to subsidise things when it suits and run deficit financing.
It's troubling though because without a price on carbon things become complicated.
America's climate policy is a train wreck.
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nigelj at 06:14 AM on 3 April 2019Protecting oil companies instead of the climate-vulnerable is elitist
"Nevertheless, for all the competition and technical input to electric car design, the weight to range ratio of lithium-ion batteries places practical limits on the utility of electric cars when compared to ICE cars."
Yes and no. The 2019 nissan leaf electric car is moderately priced, and can go 150 miles on a full charge and a new model available shortly will do 200 miles. This is quite sufficient for work and travel for the vast majority of people, assuming some recharging stations. The venerable toyota corolla can go 500 miles on a full tank of gas, but this is largely superfluous unless you do very long trips somewhere with few petrol stations, and not many people do this. So the difference between the two cars is psychological rather than real.
In addition 10 disruptive battery technologies are under development and some will no doubt extend range for those needing 500 miles. Even if some of these fail, and being careful of getting carried away technological hype, it still looks very promising. So consciousnessof sheep is too pessimistic for me as well. But the article on Britain as Venezuela is interesting. Just chose it at random.
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william5331 at 06:04 AM on 3 April 2019Asteroid to hit Earth in August 2046 - Emergency IPCC UN panel formed
Worth keeping an eye on thought. Each future observation refines the probable orbit of this piece of rock (or is it a snow ball?) . More likely that we will have destroyed our civilization by then and won't have the capacity remaining to do anything about it.
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